How I learned To Focus
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shibori dyed silk using he shade colors
FOCUS
In 1998 a friend suggested I learn to dye fabric, then I could cover my books in silk. I enrolled at the University of Kentucky. Six weeks after starting classes my 26 year old son had a paralyzing accident.
When I first received the call from the emergency room nurse on September 11, 1998, I assumed she was telling me the worst so I wouldn’t be getting my hopes up. I listened as she stated Donnie's condition: collapsed lung, paralyzed, no brain damage. I knew he would pull through. And I knew I was strong and in control.
I marched through those steel gray emergency room doors as if to say: Come on Donnie we can handle this, let’s go on home. Of course we couldn’t—not with all those tubes and that paralysis. The first thing he said to me, the very first thing was, “I’m sorry.” That was before all the tubes were inserted and I’m sure neither one of us knew it would be weeks before any real conversation would take place and that I would learn to read lips and tell him things from some place inside me that could only be spoken then.
Several weeks later as he became stronger and only a few tubes remained in his arm and his throat and other hidden places under sheets that I could never see, we moved on to the mundane. Who will care for his dog while he’s in the hospital and can he live on his own, even if he is paralyzed? I didn’t even ask, can he? I simply assumed.
"Should I quit school to take care of him," I asked myself. When I realized this was forever and we both had to learn to deal with it, I decided to stay in school and learned the most important lesson of my life: focus.
The only way I could manage classes and intensive care was going to be by picking one thing. I chose the Arashi Shibori technique for dyeing fabric. Not only did I make books, I began designing collections to wear at my performances. What I discovered was that when you wear art it changes your stance. No matter how you wear it, or fold it up in your lap, it is beautiful and has energy.
ruana using old clothes in all the shades of shade.
